


Construction of a Human

by A Caffeinated Crisis (TabbbyWright)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS
Genre: Character Study, Gender Identity, Gender focused character study, M/M, Vague sexual references is why this gets a T, You could consider Ai genderfluid or something along those lines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:35:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25064758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TabbbyWright/pseuds/A%20Caffeinated%20Crisis
Summary: Ai had a lot of thoughts go into the process of making his human form. How could he not, with how much he had watched them?
Relationships: Ai | Ignis/Fujiki Yuusaku
Comments: 22
Kudos: 62





	Construction of a Human

Ai was fascinated by everything about humans, from their behavior to their hearts, to what they said and didn’t say. The space between actions and words, the lies and truths and half truths they would tell. 

So much of it of course were things the ignis did themselves, being born from humans after all, but with the ignis there were only six of them, compared to many millions more humans, all of them unique. 

Sometimes he thought their personalities matched their faces, other times they didn’t. To him, Yusaku was one of those people whose appearance and personality didn’t match. His wide, doe-like eyes made him look innocent when he was anything but. If you caught him off guard, he looked a lot more approachable than he was when he would walk away from someone speaking to him, or respond bluntly and to the point. 

Beyond that, on days where Yusaku had taken Ai to school, Ai had listened in on some of Yusaku’s classmates, slipping out of his duel disk when he fell asleep, and into the network, and into classmate’s phones, eavesdropping on them. Maybe someone unlikely would have information about Hanoi, or maybe it would just be interesting to listen to them. Always, it ended up being the latter. 

Surprisingly, there was a scattering of comments about Yusaku though--those were the most interesting to him. 

_ “It’s unfortunate he’s not more approachable. He’s pretty cute.” _

_ “I’m a little jealous--have you seen his eyelashes?! I can only pull that off with fake ones…” _

It was a lot of weird little things like this, mostly comments about how Yusaku was kind of weird, totally unapproachable, but a handful of things highlighting those differences between expectations and reality. Yusaku was  _ prettier _ than he should’ve been for a  _ boy _ in particular, was one that came up more than once. 

So Ai began to study that. He hadn’t ever put much thought into  _ why _ humans looked the way that they looked before, but it was true that Yusaku was maybe a little more feminine than other boys his age. Not in his personality, there was nothing about his personality that was delicate or pretty of course. Yusaku was far, far from that kind of person. But he was slight, his facial features were soft, his fingers were long and thin and graceful. 

He was pretty, though if you asked Ai, Yusaku was beautiful. 

When they were together, Ai liked to study Yusaku even more. He liked to take in Yusaku when he was unguarded like this beneath him, vulnerable and not afraid, even relaxed. Ai took him in, his graceful body and his softer features. He indexed all these details, every detail of Yusaku when they were together. 

“Ai?”

The way his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, concern. Subtle as ever. 

“Hm? Can’t wait for me to continue, huh?”

Yusaku just rolled his eyes, and pulled Ai’s monstrous head down for a kiss. 

**/ / /**

When Ai set out to make his human form, he didn’t know where to begin. Pouring over all these things he had learned about humans, he contemplated what kind of body he should have. Honestly, a woman’s body was probably closer to what the ignis were like, aside from breasts, which Ai thought might be fun to have, but also cumbersome. He had no attachment to the idea of being a man, or the things that came with that. 

Yusaku though… Yusaku was his origin, and he wanted to pay tribute to the person that had suffered so much so that Ai could exist. He loved Yusaku more than he had ever loved anything, and he liked how Yusaku’s body felt when he touched it, he liked the shape of it. Maybe that was just because he loved Yusaku, but looking a little like him didn’t seem like a bad idea. Not identical, Yusaku was too skinny, and Ai wanted to protect him, so he couldn’t be skin and bones quite like that. But thin, masculine, that he could do. 

As he built his new sense of self, he couldn’t help but think he wasn’t really going to end up much like the idea of men that other people had, that people thought Yusaku didn’t fit into the box of. Which was fine for Ai! He had seen so many thing when he was with humans, and he liked the idea of being more on the “feminine” side of things as they might say. He thought makeup seemed fun (he had seen Yusaku play with eyeliner once or twice, and was sad to find out that Yusaku had no interest in anything else about it), and maybe it would be fun to have longer hair? You could do all sorts of things with it after all. He saw all the different ways that Aoi styled her avatars, and that was  _ much _ more exciting than anything Yusaku or Takeru or Kusanagi had done with theirs. 

Besides, if he was going to be human, he wanted to explore all the different ways of being a human, and what it felt like to be different kinds of human. Every single person he’d ever seen was unique in some way, and why shouldn’t he explore that too? 

He wanted to surprise Yusaku with this, see if he could catch him off guard enough to get an honest reaction out of him. He wanted to be taller now--he had been the smaller one for too long, and he wanted to bend down a bit like the guys in the dramas did to kiss their girlfriends. That was the most appealing thing for him, honestly. He wanted to kiss Yusaku like that, see how he reacted (though he was certain that Yusaku’s reaction would likely be the blank stare that he was so good at). 

As he finished putting himself together, he took himself in in a mirror he had summoned into the Cyberse space. His clothes were a bit more costumey, he supposed, but they were fun, and he wanted an excuse to go shopping anyway. Yusaku didn’t do that, and Ai couldn’t make him, but now he could. He ran his fingers through his thick, dark, curls, adjusted his bangs a bit. Lots of little adjustments to his jaw, eyelashes (he liked the idea of them being dramatic and pretty and the kind to make girls jealous). 

Ai looked at his earlobes, thought of Revolver and his trademark earrings. He liked them, honestly. He thought it was a good choice. Revolver might be inclined to murder him, which he wasn’t a fan of, but he had good taste in  _ something _ at least. But what could Ai do… 

It dawned on him that he didn’t want to abandon his roots entirely. After all, he wasn’t human, he never would be, but he was an ignis, and he thought his ignis form was pretty cute! 

A little more thinking and he had earrings that he was pleased with, for the moment. He wondered vaguely if Yusaku would look nice with earrings, and decided immediately that he would, but that it was unlikely that Yusaku would want to put the effort into such a thing. 

But taking himself in now, Ai felt pleased with the fruits of his labor. He was what he was, and he supposed he was a man, whatever that meant for him, whatever that meant for an ignis in a robot body that didn’t have sex organs. 

He only had one more thing to do before he could go see Yusaku, and literally sweep him off his feet, and that was to see if Lightning left anything behind. 

And then he would go back to his Yusaku, and see if he could mend his broken heart, and live on with the those that did remain that he loved. 


End file.
